


Adaptation

by bamboozledone



Series: Alternate Takes [6]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:25:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bamboozledone/pseuds/bamboozledone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss never shoots Coin, and the Hunger Games continue. Part 6 in the 'Alternate Takes' series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adaptation

**Author's Note:**

> The Alternate Takes series posits eight alternate endings to the books, each with one major plot point changed. Basically it's a way for me to get over my desire to tear the last forty or so pages out of my 'Mockingjay' copy.
> 
> All characters are the property of Suzanne Collins, whose name I consistently think is "Susan Colin". Whoops.

The arrow is steady, decidedly true. Her eyes stay trained on the spot where the tip enters Snow’s chest, spouting dark blood everywhere. He coughs for a moment, seizes, and then goes slack against his rusty restraints. The crowd roars in response, and she catches Gale’s eye as he claps and whistles above the din.

 

 

 

Katniss lowers the bow.

 

 

 

Overall, the moment is completely anticlimactic.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

When Peeta leaves, Katniss tries not to take it too personally. He really wants to return to the place where his family died, and with the Final Hunger Games due to start in four months, she knows that he’s keen to be out of the Capitol’s confining walls.

 

 

 

Peeta doesn’t even try for a hug. He shuffles awkwardly on the train platform, and pats her shoulder before he stumbles toward the sleeping compartment.

 

 

 

President Coin sees him off personally, and puts her hand on Katniss’s neck when the train doors shudder shut.

 

 

 

“Will you leave him alone?” Katniss asks quietly.

 

 

 

“Just keep playing your part,” Coin says. “Unlike Snow, I keep my promises.”

 

 

 

Katniss barely stifles her laugh.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

She ends up in an apartment with only one window, which overlooks the Capitol’s main industry buildings. All things considered, the apartment is very nice: The couches are fluffy and homey, the kitchen is well-stocked, and she can only faintly hear the sounds of the traffic riddling the streets below. If she puts on her glasses (something she never thought to need before), she can see outside the Walls of the Capitol, to the brilliant mountains capped with glistening snow.

 

 

 

The glass of the window is reinforced, bulletproof. Katniss couldn’t break it if she tried.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Gale stays in the Capitol with Katniss, though his time and attention are diverted to the new government and his role therein. She sees him slowly work his way out of tattered mining clothes into softer, more luxurious fabrics that cling to his shoulders and make a soft swishing sound when he moves too quickly.

 

 

 

“When did you start drinking coffee?” he says the next time they have lunch, at a small café filled with former simpering Capitol socialites. “You never liked it before.”

 

 

 

Katniss shrugs. “I’ve always liked coffee. You just never noticed.”

 

 

 

It’s a small lie, but she gets a sick thrill when she sees how much it stings him to realize that he doesn’t really know this Katniss at all.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

The new group of Gamemakers invites Katniss over to the Control Center to catch a glimpse of their Masterpiece (their word, not hers). She politely declines the invitation and refuses to leave her house for three straight days, until Johanna Mason calls and threatens to knock down her front door with an axe.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

Katniss and Johanna have the uneasiest of friendships, but she picks up the phone whenever Johanna’s number pops up because she’s so cut off from everything. They are the only two Victors who haven’t fled (Haymitch left just last week on a train, undoubtedly to drink away even the mere thought of sobriety), so they become default allies in the media war that brews around them.

 

 

 

They talk about nothing for a long while, murmuring about the weather and the newest fashions that neither is remotely interested in. Sometimes Katniss will try to mention home, pull something out of Johanna that obviously would be better left in solitude, and she inevitably ends up with a dial tone on the other end of the line.

 

 

 

Johanna shows up at her door the day before the Reaping, a bottle of booze in her left hand.

 

 

 

“You need to get laid,” Johanna announces loudly, handing her the bottle. “Really, it’s good for your health.”

 

 

 

Katniss stares for a moment, and then laughs when Johanna rolls her eyes.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

The Reaping is different this time. No names in wide glass bowls, just a listing read over a nightly newscast. The twenty-four Capitol children all step up when their names are called, most freely sobbing as the announcer, a former rebel with unadulterated malice in his eyes, barrels on, name by name, life by life.  

 

 

 

Katniss doesn’t miss Coin the background of the shot, smoothing down her black suit.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

In a way this is even crueler than the former Games. Katniss reads in the papers that these Capitol children are so overstuffed and underworked that even simple tasks, like running from one end of the building to the other, provides and insurmountable challenge. Many vomit from the exertion and are subsequently denied water by a new Training Center leader who Katniss suspects Coin had a hand in choosing.

 

 

 

Katniss watches, nearly sick to her stomach, as a young girl, perhaps no more than ten, picks up a knife and tries to throw it at a molded mannequin ten yards away on the nightly news cast.

 

 

 

The girl misses completely.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

She meets a young man, a former rebel like her, who has gold-brown eyes and a warm heart. He buys her a drink in a small tavern that is popular with the District folk who remained in the Capitol after the Power Shift (that’s what she calls it because _revolution_ entails something much more than what occurred here), and they talk and laugh about how different their lives are here in the place they sought to destroy.

 

 

 

She hates him because he kisses her hand rather than her mouth when the night draws to a close.

 

 

 

She doesn’t see him again.

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

“Did you ever fuck him?” Johanna asks as they watch the Tribute scores get debated on a talk show.

 

 

 

“Who?”

 

 

 

“Your hot cousin.”

 

 

 

Katniss doesn’t even blush. “Almost. Once. In District 2.”

 

 

 

“How do you _almost_ fuck someone?”

 

 

 

Katniss shrugs. “Long story. Bad story, really.”

 

 

 

“Oh come on.”

 

 

 

“You and Finnick.”

 

 

 

Johanna glances at the ceiling, apparently bored. “It’s not like Annie was always lucid enough to suck him off near the end.”

 

 

 

“That’s disgusting.”

 

 

 

Johanna smirks. “Oh come on. You’re in love with your cousin and you played house with your fellow Victor. You have no right to talk about other people’s perversity.”

 

 

 

“I never played house with Peeta. And Gale’s not my cousin.”

 

 

 

Johanna gives her a pointed look. “Wasn’t he, though?”

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Peeta comes back the next afternoon, the day before the Tribute interviews that Katniss refuses to watch, holding a basket filled with sweet-smelling treats. She doesn’t have to ask why, since she knows that Johanna has kept in touch with him even though Katniss hasn’t (“Partners in torture,” Johanna had laughed once, sipping on a bottle of red wine), and welcomes him in with a kiss on the cheek and the hug he never gave her on the platform.  

 

 

 

He holds her hand and sits with her on the couch. They watch something on television that doesn’t appeal to either of them, but fills the void of their silence nicely.

 

 

 

For a moment, she feels whole.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

It is decided, amongst a group of people that Katniss barely knows and doesn’t entirely trust, that Sponsors and Mentors will not be a part of this, the Final Hunger Games. The Tributes must fend for themselves without any support whatsoever.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

“Come back with me?” Peeta asks, suitcase in hand. “You’d like Four. It’s quiet there.”

 

 

 

Katniss winces at the mention of Finnick’s district. It’s no secret that Peeta’s been spending his time there (the gossip papers still write little articles meant to titillate the mind, and Peeta’s friendship with Annie is currently the press’s favorite topic of the moment), but she can’t help but feel that being in a place so consumed by water and sadness can’t be somewhere she would survive.

 

 

 

She says no and kisses his cheek again before he leaves.  

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

They’re not Victors here, not really, and they’re certainly not Mentors, but Katniss feels this overwhelming sense of obligation to be there for the start of the Games anyway.  So she pulls on something respectable and tries to remember how to do her makeup before she hops on a train for the Center.

 

 

 

“Didn’t know if you’d show,” Johanna says when Katniss takes a seat next to her at a long desk. The room is almost empty, save for a couple reporters who look less than thrilled at the lack of activity in the area. “Thought you might jump a train and hightail it out of here before the bloodbath began.”

 

 

 

“You know me. I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Katniss answers, bordering on delirious when the countdown starts.  

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

The Cornucopia is more bloody than usual. Katniss notices that the Gamemakers have been overtly liberal this year with weaponry, each ill-equipped Tribute practically gifted with a plethora of knives and axes and silver bows. Their inadequacies at survival skills might just be masked by the amount of offensive materials they have been given.

 

 

 

 

The countdown ends. The first deaths are slow and agonizing, and Katniss ends up suckling on the top of a bottle of white liquor before the cannon finally fires. After all is said and done, fourteen children lay dead or dying at the mouth of the horn.

 

 

 

Ten Tributes remain, all bloody and crying.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

She and Johanna sit in her apartment, the television on mute.

 

 

“We voted for this,” she says, watching as one tribute chokes on her own vomit. _Nine left._ “We thought it was a good idea.”

 

 

 

Johanna scoots closer, until Katniss can smell the wine on her breath. “Everything seems like a good idea until it isn’t.”

 

 

 

Johanna is unnaturally warm against Katniss’s body, and Katniss didn’t realize how much she missed being touched until Johanna’s hand travels up the side of her face.

 

 

 

“Johanna…” she stutters. “I don’t understand.”

 

 

 

“Just go with it,” Johanna whispers, and turns the light off.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

One girl kills another girl completely by accident ( _eight left_ ). She weeps and weeps until another boy comes over and hacks her head off inexpertly with an axe that looks strangely familiar. It’s gory and terrifying and just about makes Katniss take the rope she keeps by bed and tie it into a comforting noose.

 

 

 

_Seven left_.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Johanna becomes an unwitting fixture in her existence. They eat breakfast together, go to functions side by side, eat expensive dinners with their legs touching under the table, and sleep in the same bed at night. Johanna is an aggressive dreamer, restless and loud, and Katniss finds herself losing more rest than she gains with Johanna’s constant presence.

 

 

 

Katniss learns to cook on a whim. Johanna looks at the plentiful spread of meats and cheeses and strews suspiciously before deciding that Katniss has no legitimate reason to poison her.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

A little girl who can’t be more than twelve intentionally eats Nightlock a week in. _Six left._

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Johanna learns to take a bath without screaming. It takes a couple tries and some serious bribery, but she manages to keep her mouth shut for five minutes, her body shaking as Katniss wraps her arms around her midsection and holds onto her, fully clothed.

 

 

 

“Someday you’ll have to thank me,” Katniss says, running her soap-filled hands through Johanna’s hair.

 

 

 

“Unlikely,” Johanna replies, biting at Katniss’s neck.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Johanna makes the mistake of opening the door to a reporter twenty minutes after one Tribute falls down and cracks her skulls in seven different places ( _five left_ ). Katniss tries her hardest to shove him back out, but the reporter’s camera flash burns her eyes and he makes his way inside her foyer before Katniss can see again.

 

 

 

“Miss Everdeen, you don’t really expect us to believe that this is really the last Hunger Games we’re going to see, do you? The ratings have been excellent, and even President Coin has made intimations that the popularity of the Games warrants another year or two.”

 

 

 

“It’ll end here, I promise” Katniss says, but when she hears the reporter snicker, she’s not sure she’s right.

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Gale is the one who brings it up. They’re sitting in his apartment sipping coffee that Gale went out of his way to buy for Katniss, when he pulls out a week-old newspaper with Johanna and Katniss on the back page, laughing and kissing by a fountain.  

 

 

 

“So that’s new.”

 

 

 

Katniss puts her coffee mug down, frowns when she can’t remember the moment captured in the photograph. “I assume you have some sort of problem with it?”

 

 

 

“No. Not at all. It’s…interesting,” Gale says, handing her the paper when she gestures for it. “Not really what anybody expected.”

 

 

 

“Not what _you_ expected, at least.”

 

 

 

Gale smiles. “No. Not what I expected.”

 

 

 

“Jealous?”

 

 

 

He laughs. “Maybe. A little bit. ”

 

 

 

Katniss looks at him. “You’re not though, are you?”

 

 

 

Gale hugs her, really _hugs_ her like he hasn’t in what seems like an eternity. “I don’t know why it doesn’t bother me. Maybe it should. It’s you after all. I still think of you as mine.”

 

 

 

“You’ve always like Johanna, though.”

 

 

 

“Like, not so much. Trust…yes. I trust her. I don’t actually think she’d kill you, and that tended to be my concern with Peeta near the end.”

 

 

 

Katniss chuckles. “You clearly don’t know Johanna well enough.”

 

 

 

Later, she sits with Gale on his couch, her head nestled in the crook of his arm. “She’s reminds me of you,” Gale whispers, touching the tips of Katniss’s hair and kissing her temple. “In an odd way, it makes sense.”

 

 

 

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Katniss murmurs, snuggling closer.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

For a day, the Gamemakers are kind. The seemingly endless rains they have drowned the Tributes in stops, and the sky is light with sparkling white clouds that streak the horizon. A crisp wind blows northward, and, for exactly twenty-four hours, the anxiety and stress of the Games is ameliorated by the excellent weather.

 

 

 

The next morning, however, the sun scorches the children in the arena until their skin wrinkles and blisters. Three young boys literally burn alive when they can find no shelter from the deadly rays of light ( _two left_ ) and the two who manage to be spared scream in agony for hours on end.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

“Don’t go falling in love with me,” Johanna says one night, stroking the hair out of Katniss’s face as she snores beside her.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

The remaining two Tributes die from dehydration. They sit next to one another, under the minimal shade of a pine tree, their hands wound tightly together. Katniss can’t help but notice how normal they look: They’re not Capitol citizens yet, not exactly. In their jumpsuits they look like every other Tribute in every other Game before this looked: Alone, scared, and helpless.

 

 

 

Their deaths are so instantaneous that nobody can declare with any accuracy which one drew the last breath.  

 

 

 

There is no Victor this time around.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Johanna wakes up the next morning to the smell of pancakes and strawberries and fresh juice. She walks into the kitchen, naked, and sees Katniss by the stove. She turns around, and scowls when she sees Johanna’s bare skin.

 

 

 

“We have robes, you know.”

 

 

 

Johanna laughs, kisses Katniss until she can’t breathe.

 

 

\---

 

 

In the end, the Games don't continue. Katniss keeps her promise.


End file.
